Why Preventing Cancer Is Not the Priority in Drug Development

Sorry, I was kidding about "what entity". The same entity that traditionally steps in to solve the needs that otherwise are not met due to tragedy of the commons -- government.

Patents, copyright protections (yes, they're screwed up now, but better than without), infrastructure like roads or postal mail historically.

Just that US legislative process is spinning its wheels at the moment and for the foreseeable future.

Just remember, Cancer isn't a disease.

It is hundreds of different disease related to mutations in the function of cell division. Cells that don't need to divide, start dividing but the daughter cells are not the same as the parent.

In order to treat Cancer with a drug, you need to identify which of the hundreds of subtypes it is and give the right drug. Either that, or give people cocktails of lots of drugs and hope that you can identify the right one before the other ones kill the patient.

At this point there do not appear to be any magic bullets that will cure cancer, just lots of work and research to chip away at the problem, one subtype or one patient at a time.

And cancer appears to be inherent in what we are, animals. It seems unlikely that we will be able to change what we are sufficiently to avoid cancer. No vaccines are likely.

On the other hand, all the investment in Cancer research is paying off and is chipping away at this family of diseases. There are lots of reasons, not just new drugs, but some new drugs are part of the solution.

Maybe the human race is at a point where we have solved all the easy problems and now have a hard slog to chip away at the rest of them, bit by bit.

Really? I would think the rich are very much incentivized to fund any research that may slow down their aging (as are the poor, but they don't have enough money). When you have achieved most of the goals in your life, the remaining goal you have is perhaps to elongate that success for however longer you can. For example, several Chinese emperors, starting from the first one, were obsessed with living forever, giving tons of resources and power to "alchemists" who claimed to be able to produce medicine to keep the emperor young.

Wasn't me with the downvote, but just as a friendly comment, you do come off a little "if you knew more, you'd feel as I do" with this comment. Maybe, as another suggests, focus more on information and provide some links?

Hi, first of all, I understand the combative skepticism as I used to be that way myself. I used to scoff at chiropractic and slap my knees at all the hilarious takedowns of woo-merchants by Quackwatch and SBM and it was all great fun.

But a chronic auto-immune illness that became debilitating about 5 years ago, and a long, exasperating, and ultimately futile attempt to find treatment via conventional medicine forced me to consider anything in order to get well, and the method that got me well came via chiropractors and Lipton's ideas.

As of now I'm almost completely recovered, whilst others I know with similar conditions who have stuck with conventional medicine continue to be sick and frustrated.

So, scoff if you will, but had I not learned what I learned from Lipton, I'd have no health and possibly no life.

Now I understand the physiology behind my illness and my recovery, I believe those who say the same kind of approach could be effective for cancer - at least the ones that occur downstream of auto-immune illness (colorectal cancer for example). And I believe the anecdotes of people who've used these techniques to overcome cancer, because it aligns with my own experience. (Though let me be clear: I don't believe chiropractors can "cure cancer", and I don't have much time for chiropractic at all these days, now that I've found better and cheaper alternatives.)

But of course it needs more research so it stops being mere anecdotes and starts becoming hard data. That's the whole point of this thread.

As for "hard science" - all I can point you to are the books by Tanzi and Lipton, and Tanzi's research papers.

Tanzi is Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. He's been a leading researcher on Alheimer's for over 15 years, and much of his research and writing is focused on the role of emotions in genetic expression and the development of illness.

But he's co-authored books with Deepak Chopra and has been criticized by Jerry Coyne - so he can therefore be disregarded, right?

This is exactly my point.

I profoundly wish there were more hard studies (indeed I put quite a lot of thought into whether I could help facilitate some research based on my own experience).

I understand that Lipton's manner and Tanzi's link to Chopra make them easy to dismiss in the way that you have.

But the dismissals all seem to succumb to the "begging the question" fallacy - dismissing them because "we already know they are wrong" rather than engaging with their arguments and evidence.

I may only be a sample size of one, but significant numbers of people are recovering from illness by following the principles they espouse and significant numbers of qualified medical practitioners accept and endorse their ideas and research findings.

If more attention was paid to this research and if it were then to inspire further research, maybe the world would start making real progress towards overcoming the illnesses that account for most of the ballooning costs of the health systems in western countries.

Update: here's a link to a recent study linking emotion-focused therapies on telemere length in cancer patients. Telemere length is believed to be relevant in cancer risk and recovery potential: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.29063/full